Cafebrería El Péndulo Polanco

25 Coffee Shops to Visit Before You Die

"This amazing chain of Mexico City bookstores normally follow multi-story floorplans incorporating café and restaurant facilities. A healthy serving of eye candy in the form of wooden floors, balconies with curvy green handrails, and living plants that seem to protrude from the shelves are common to the seven locations spanning the entire city. These stores will stir up your imagination, or at least give you something to look at as you stir your coffee. Common items for sale include new titles or reprints of older books in both Spanish and English and music (CD and vinyl) sealed in plastic wrap. Designer items commonly with Mexican and literary themes—porcelain luchador-themed salt and pepper shakers, or plush toys of William Shakespeare for example—are abundant on the stores’ gift sections. Don’t expect to find old, rare books or to have to dig through dusty crates of trash and treasure in these chic establishments. Two of the locations are small, single-story cafebrerías in the shopping malls of Santa Fe and Perisur. The locations on neighboring Roma and Condesa neighborhoods both feature 2-story floorplans in former mansions built in the traditional art deco style. In the Central Zona Rosa location on Hamburgo street, the dining gets less formal over each floor—table dining on the ground floor, sofas and reading for the cafe on the first floor, and a bar on the second floor. Most of the pictures above are from the featured Polanco location on Alejandro Dumas street. The mid-south San Angel location in the Centro Cultural Helénico theatre also features fascinating architectural features over its wooden-paneled 3 floors, including a very tall palm tree that grows through the entire height of the building." - ATLAS_OBSCURA

"El Péndulo elevates the café-bookstore concept exceptionally well, inviting you to linger for hours over coffee and pastries in its large, two-level cafe (there are even tables on the second floor's balcony). Books in Spanish and English line sagging shelves and sit in precarious piles on the floor, and staff will happily help you search for music or a movie from their extensive inventory of CDs and DVDs. The store has a large selection of novelty gift items, too, including journals and pens so you can document your visit. Be sure to give a nudge to the pendulum for which the store is named on your way out; suspended from the ceiling, the sand-filled, cone-shaped pendulum swings back and forth, making patterns as customers give the pendulum a gentle push."

Cafebrería El Péndulo – Mexico City, Mexico - Gastro Obscura

"This amazing chain of Mexico City bookstores normally follow multi-story floorplans incorporating café and restaurant facilities. A healthy serving of eye candy in the form of wooden floors, balconies with curvy green handrails, and living plants that seem to protrude from the shelves are common to the seven locations spanning the entire city. These stores will stir up your imagination, or at least give you something to look at as you stir your coffee. Common items for sale include new titles or reprints of older books in both Spanish and English and music (CD and vinyl) sealed in plastic wrap. Designer items commonly with Mexican and literary themes—porcelain luchador-themed salt and pepper shakers, or plush toys of William Shakespeare for example—are abundant on the stores’ gift sections. Don’t expect to find old, rare books or to have to dig through dusty crates of trash and treasure in these chic establishments. Two of the locations are small, single-story cafebrerías in the shopping malls of Santa Fe and Perisur. The locations on neighboring Roma and Condesa neighborhoods both feature 2-story floorplans in former mansions built in the traditional art deco style. In the Central Zona Rosa location on Hamburgo street, the dining gets less formal over each floor—table dining on the ground floor, sofas and reading for the cafe on the first floor, and a bar on the second floor. Most of the pictures above are from the featured Polanco location on Alejandro Dumas street. The mid-south San Angel location in the Centro Cultural Helénico theatre also features fascinating architectural features over its wooden-paneled 3 floors, including a very tall palm tree that grows through the entire height of the building. Know Before You Go Every store has different opening times but the constant in which all will be open is between 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Changes to the restaurant/café menus usually occur throughout all locations but still tend to offer at least a few vegan and vegetarian options." - a acoumbis, acoumbis, karynhughes1, Oliver Hong, m maxmaya86, Junost Apodo, notoriousFIG, nanpalmero, Erin Everywhere, Martin, Was Buf Now Was, Xavixavir, Monsieur Mictlan, Gerard Nolan, M Martin, linkogecko